Thursday, 6 November 2014

Creative Coffins


Someone once told me that there's a 99.9% that any idea that anyone comes up with has already been thought up by someone else, and a quick Google search shows that we at 'Six Feet Under' aren't the first to start a company that helps people be a bit more creative at funerals.  The purpose of this post is to highlight that our idea does indeed have potential.

Source: http://www.creativecoffins.com/coffins/spitf
Creative Coffins was the first site that came up during this search.  Creative Coffins provides picture coffins, offering a wide selection of designs.  The company is based in The Channel Islands and only ships to the UK.  

What this company does is similar to what we wish to do as well.  However, rather than shipping the entire coffin, we want to just focus on printing the photo and laminating it on the exterior of an inexpensive coffin. One of our assumptions is that people would be willing to pay for this service as it would be much more meaningful than a traditional expensive heavy-wood coffin.  

Colourful Coffins is another company that helps people celebrate their unique lives, by offering customizable designs.  The company is also based in the UK and has a simple, intuitive website that customers use to design their own coffin.  The company appears to have a network of funeral directors as partners, and distributes the coffins exclusively through these funeral directors.  
Source: http://colourfulcoffins.com/2013/05/religious/

One advantage of going through funeral directors is that most people choose to go through a funeral director (at least that's our assumption), and by assuring the funeral directors that they will only sell through them and not directly to the customer, it is more likely that Colourful Coffins will be promoted by the funeral directors rather than Creative Coffins.

Overall, I find that the existence of these companies encouraging rather than discouraging.  Too often I hear people dismiss an entrepreneurial idea solely on the basis that a similar company exists. However, I believe that an existing company proves that there is a market for the idea.

At Six Feet Under, we plan on differentiating ourselves from companies such as those mentioned above by providing a service that only ships the laminate material (ie: the photo that's glued to the casket), and applying it to coffins already available at the funeral home.  By doing this, we believe that the casket could be customized relatively inexpensively and within short notice.  Further, by only needing to ship the laminate material, the costs of express shipping it to the funeral home (or undertaker) will be significantly cheaper than shipping the entire coffin.

In addition to photos, we plan to also offer fabric and leather options. 


Moving Foward

There are a few assumptions that we need to verify:

  1. Is there a market for similar coffins in The Netherlands? If so, how large is it and what is the customer archetype?  
  2. Will Dutch undertakers work with us to sell this service / product to their customers? 
  3. Can we provide a quality product by laminating prints onto coffins?  How do we do this?  
  4. How much is the customer willing to pay for this product?  
Some other possibilities: 
  • Contact both Creative Coffins and Colourful Coffins and explain that we are interested in setting up a similar company in The Netherlands and ask them if they'd be willing to share some facts and figures and possibly their experience in starting up the company.  









4 comments:

  1. Well done. I think another assumption would be the following: who is going to stick the laminating prints on the coffin? How skillful should one be? How much time/cost does it take?

    Best,

    Luca

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  2. Good point. We will definitely have to make it easy to do.

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  3. I was thinking if we can team up with the coffin producers to make a standard coffin, we can deliver them some standard color sleeves/panels in advance and the customizable sleeves on demand. They would then stick it to the coffin and deliver it to the funeral directors. Good find of the companies above David! do you think the two companies would want to share their facts and figures with us? This would give us more clarity for sure.

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  4. Great post. Indeed, defintely don't be discouraged by this! And yes, contact them! What kind of people are their customers? Did they ever try to sell to mainland EU?

    (and I was thinking exactly the same as Luca: it should be foolproof!)

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